Boy of the Year
by Ski-Ming
Summary: Darry finds out that nostalgia is delicate, but potent: it means the pain from an old wound. It's a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. Repost from a million years ago.


Boy of the Year (Lo Que Nunca Pasó por Sus Labios)_  
>by Ski-Ming<em>

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><p>Disclaimer: <em>The Outsiders<em> and all of its characters are the property of S.E. Hinton and various publishers and media distributors. And apologies to the phenomenal Cherríe Moraga, whose poem and fragment of a title I have flagrantly misused for the purpose of this story. Also, apologies to Matt Weiner for ripping off "Mad Men" in the summary.

Author's notes: I took this down a while ago – I believe I have the completed version, but please let me know if there's something wonky of course. I'm reposting in memory of the man who inspired Pellicrow. He died a little over a month ago, now; and I want to honor him in the small ways that I can.

Translated from the Spanish, the title means "that which never passed by their lips."

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><p>Loving you is like living<br>in the war years.  
>I <em>do <em>think of Bogart & Bergman  
>not clear who's who<br>but still singin a long smoky  
>mood into the piano bar<br>drinks straight up  
>the last bottle in the house<br>while bombs split  
>outside, a broken<br>world.

– from "Loving in the War Years" by Cherríe L. Moraga

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><p>It had come out of nowhere:<p>

The city of Tulsa was enveloped in sleet so bitter and so furious, even for January, that all the old-timers declared it the worst storm on record as they shivered down to their fragile birdlike bones. That was the night Frank Pellicrow telephoned the Curtis house. He was passing through town on business, he said, and insisted that his old Army buddy Darrel Curtis bring his pretty wife and three boys to meet him for lunch at his hotel the next day. The oldest son, who was also named Darrel, had asked his father why Pellicrow couldn't just come to their house, what with the price of gasoline for the family's unquenchable old sedan, let alone lunch at a fancy hotel across town.

"You can't always let everything be about money," his father told him.

Yes, I can, Darrel thought, but kept his words to himself.

That night Darrel dreamed about a cherry-flavored mouth and warm, smooth skin. When he awoke the next morning he remembered nothing of it.

The ground was slushy but the sky was bright and blue when the son shuffled into the kitchen. The two youngest boys had school – "What do you have to do to get a day off school, blow it up?" one of them had demanded as he listened to the radio announcement in disbelief – but Darrel thought his job at the construction site might have been cancelled for the day on account of the storm. As his mother slid fried eggs and bacon onto his plate, Darrel tried to reach his boss. After the fourth try, he gave up.

In his senior year of high school, Darrel had won a football scholarship to the University of Oklahoma, but even that hadn't been enough to stretch into a four-year education. So he had taken a job roofing houses, figuring that a year's worth of construction work would at least keep him in shape for the next fall. Then Darrel's father had gotten fired, or laid off as he put it; and one year had turned into two.

After breakfast, Mr. Curtis disappeared back into the bedroom with a mug of coffee and the wanted ads, and Darrel's brothers left for school – or, more likely, for the corner store where his older younger brother spent time instead of in class, Darrel thought as he washed the dishes thinking _he is wasting his life and doesn't give a hang_. For the rest of the morning, Darrel attempted to go back to sleep, but the noise from the other room kept him from drifting off – to make ends meet, his mother gave piano lessons to children whose parents likely as not purposefully forgot to pay her. Darrel wasn't the type to sleep in, anyway.

At eleven-thirty, Darrel and his mother and his father piled into the old sedan. The outside air was crisp and stung the exposed skin around the collar of Darrel's ironed shirt. Darrel's father drove, coffee gummed in the corners of his mouth and hands loose on the top of the steering wheel. Darrel let his mother have the front passenger seat, even though at six-two he could have used the legroom. It was several minutes before the heater warmed up and the three of them sat shivering, none complaining. The car was too old to have ever had a radio; which was just as well, as Darrel's father howled old Sinatra songs as he accelerated onto the highway.

The car would only go fifty, and you had to floor it with all your might to get it to go even that fast. One bad part about sticking in the slow lane, Darrel thought, was getting cut off by all the eighteen-wheelers. The worst part was Mrs. Curtis's nerves. She was gripping onto the handle above the passenger window and bracing her body against the car door as if she were magnetic.

"Darrel, slow down," Mrs. Curtis said anxiously over her husband's crooning.

"If I slow down, we'd be going backwards," he replied. "Oh, 'you can go to extremes with impossible schemes, you can laugh when your dreams fall apart at the' – _whoa!_"

For, without warning, the sedan had swerved into the next lane. The father grabbed onto the wheel and jerked the car back into the slow lane, narrowly avoiding a passing truck. The Curtises' presence was acknowledged by the squawking of several horns.

After Mrs. Curtis had assured herself that everyone was still alive, she practically screamed at him. Although his breath had caught in his throat when the car had swerved, Darrel laughed at her along with his father. Having just turned twenty, Darrel was somewhere between a boy and a man; at twice that age, Mr. Curtis both appeared and acted to be in a similar stage.

"It was black ice!" he said. "You can't see it _coming_ … all you can do is react when it hits you."

"Well if that isn't your life motto then I don't know what," the mother snapped back, but there was no venom in her words. Darrel knew she just got like that sometimes.

Darrel's father parked a few blocks away from the hotel and the family walked the rest of the way. Mr. Curtis put his arms around his wife's waist. "You know I couldn't live with myself if I ever let you get hurt," he said to her.

"We're late," she replied. She narrowed her eyes at him, but leaned her head on his shoulder briefly before briskly walking toward the hotel.

Mr. Curtis winked at his son before catching up to her. Darrel strode a few paces behind his parents, arms crossed over his chest to preserve heat.

The hotel was a towering terra cotta building supported by stately gray columns – Doric, Darrel noted. It was the sort of thing that must have been very grand when it was first built, but had gracefully decayed over the years. The Curtises crossed the green and white marble floors of the lobby to the restaurant, where their friend had already been seated for several minutes.

Pellicrow stood up when they entered. He exchanged large slaps on the back with Darrel's father and pulled a chair out for Mrs. Curtis, who laughed his efforts aside and embraced him like a brother.

"Hello, Mr. Pellicrow," Darrel said, and held his hand.

The man took it, but said, "When did you get old enough to be calling me that? No, boy, it's still Uncle Frank to you, though I swear you look more and more like your old man each time I see you."

His voice was deep and gravelly. Pellicrow had served with Darrel's father in Operation Torch and was shot in the arm twice in Morocco. The two men developed a strong friendship, even though Pellicrow was ten years older and considerably less reckless than the Private Curtis. After V-Day, both men had been discharged. Curtis returned to his hometown and the young wife he had married a week before shipping out; Pellicrow took a high-paying job in Omaha. It was if the salt of the earth had been smashed through a refining sifter. He became "your average man in the gray flannel suit," as Darrel's mother put it, though she meant it as a term of endearment. Still, there remained about Frank Pellicrow an essence of power from his war days; and whatever orders he gave you, you followed.

"Yes, sir," was all Darrel could think to mumble. He could feel the tips of his ears get hot and was grateful no one seemed to notice.

"Waiter, I'll have another Scotch. In fact, bring over a bottle and three more glasses," Pellicrow boomed.

The edges of Mrs. Curtis's mouth tugged downwards into a frown that could not be called admonishing. She scolded him: "Frank, my son's underage."

"Make it two glasses and a coffee. So this morning," Pellicrow said, "This morning I was trying to buy a box of Q-tips at the drugstore down the street. Nothing fancy, just those sticks with the fluff wrapped around the ends. So imagine my surprise when I discover that not only have they started rolling up flimsy little pieces of paper and put fluff on the ends and calling it a Q-tip, they don't even makethe real kind anymore!"

"What's so bad about the paper kind?" Darrel's father asked, baiting Pellicrow.

"What's so–what's so _bad_? You don't have any _control_ over the goddamned things! I wouldn't be surprised if it just crumbled in my fingers!"

Pellicrow went on to condemn the manager of the drugstore, the company that made the Q-tips, and the deplorable state of American manufacturing. Although Darrel was as handy with a cuss as any young man, Pellicrow's cheerful denunciation of modern technology was so profane that Darrel blushed for fear that the other patrons would hear him.

"–can put a man on the moon but they can't make a decent goddamn Q-tip anymore," Pellicrow finished.

The waiter returned with a mug of coffee, two more tumblers, and a bottle with a label that was, Darrel knew from his visits to the neighborhood liquor store, strictly behind-the-counter. Pellicrow poured a large drink for Darrel's father and a small one for Darrel's mother before refilling his own glass.

"To the decline of Western civilization," he said, and raised his glass.

They all drank.

"How's Nebraska treating you?" Mr. Curtis asked Pellicrow.

"Eh, not too bad," Pellicrow said. "Cops everywhere trying to put flies on my ass for driving too fast, but nothing worse than that. I'm putting in a new study in the house and the dust makes my eyes water, so I've been living in a hotel downtown. Place is swarming with gamblers and whores."

"You ought to settle down," Darrel's mother said. "Whatever happened to Dorothy?"

"Doroth–oh, Dorothy. Nah, she got tired of me pretty quick. She told me it was her or the dog, and you know how those things go," Pellicrow said. "I can't believe you remembered her. That must have been six years ago now."

"I hate to think of you all alone in that big empty house _or_ a hotel," Darrel's mother said.

"Ah, nothing wrong with being a free man, is there, Frank?" Darrel's father said genially. "Just like old times … I wouldn't trade what I've got for anything in the world, of course."

"Yeah, the bachelor's supper gets pretty old after a while – you can only have so much beer and steak before you get sick of it," Pellicrow joked. "Speaking of old times, though, have you talked to McAllister lately?"

"No, I haven't. What's old Roy doing these days?"

"Word is he's gone chasing after some little gal he met in Korea."

"No kidding?" said Darrel's father. "She even speak English?"

"The hell if I know. I don't know if he's gone nuts or what – maybe he didn't have it in him for another tour. Can't trust people who don't even speak your own language …"

Darrel, not having been in any wars, said nothing. Instead he read the menu that lay on his plate, and then after he had decided what he wanted he surveyed the room: the walls of dark oak paneling and the ceiling of embossed tin, also painted dark. Light was limited to green sconces on the walls and little white candles on the tabletops; there were no windows. Cigarette smoke drifted halo-like around elegant women, the kind of women Darrel didn't even know existed in Tulsa. It looks like an officer's quarters_,_ he thought absently, thinking _wild-eyed men from the daguerreotypes in my history books marching nobly towards death and yellowed pieces of paper with scrolling fountain-pen handwriting and piano music in the night_.

Pellicrow abruptly directed his attention to his menu, and Mr. and Mrs. Curtis followed suit as if cued. Darrel's mother deliberated between soup and salad, as she always did, but gave her final decision to Pellicrow instead of Darrel's father. After Pellicrow gave their orders to the waiter, he eyed the still-full bottle of Scotch, and the empty glasses in front of Darrel's parents.

"Number one house rule is, you help yourself after the first one," he told them as he tipped spirits into his own tumbler. Darrel's father chuckled and motioned for Pellicrow to hand him the bottle.

"Well, I think it's very brave of Roy, if they're in love," Darrel's mother said.

Pellicrow snorted. "You always were a romantic, Viv. Only trust people you can look in the eye. We used to joke you could use a shoelace to strangle one of 'em, then use it to blindfold his friend."

Before he even realized the words were leaving his mouth, Darrel said, "Uncle Frank – Mr. Pellicrow –, I don't think you ought to say things like that."

It was as though the three others had forgotten he was sitting there, and swiveled to look at him much as they had done with the menus.

"Beg your pardon?" Pellicrow said evenly.

The tips of Darrel's ears were burning, and his cheeks too; but he met the man's gaze and held it.

"You can't say things like that about Oriental people, anymore," Darrel said. "It's not … appropriate."

Pellicrow snorted again, but his voice remained calm. "Appropriate? I suppose appropriate is three thousand men down and you're just praying to God it's not you who's next?"

It appeared to Darrel that his parents had no words to intervene on his behalf.

"I was at Pearl Harbor," Pellicrow said. "I started out in the Navy – a pilot, yes boy, they have pilots in the Navy – I don't think even your old man knew that's how I got my start. I was on the _Arizona _at the time."

"God have mercy," Mrs. Curtis mouthed silently.

"I don't know how I'm alive today, if you want the truth. I was on the opposite side of the ship from the magazines, but even so the guy next to me was charred black. My eyesight was damaged in the blast, so now you know why I transferred. You want to know what the last thing I saw was, before everything went to hell? The pilots, boy. Flying down so low you could see them laughing. Laughing, boy. I suppose that's your definition of appropriate."

"Oh," Darrel said, after a beat.

It was not an act of submission.

Pellicrow regarded Darrel silently.

A murder of waiters suddenly descended upon the table like crows, removing extra salad forks and swooping plates in front of the diners. For the entire course, Darrel did not dare look at anything except his soup. The clattering of the silverware seemed unusually loud to him.

"Where are your other boys?" Pellicrow said.

"They had school today," Mrs. Curtis said. "Our youngest was put up a grade; he started high school in the fall."

"I suppose you're in college by now," Pellicrow said to Darrel.

"No. Uh, not yet," Darrel said warily. He wasn't sure if he really thought Pellicrow was going to somehow attack him, but he said the words through a tense jaw.

"I've always believed in taking time off before going up against the tie-and-blazer fairies," Pellicrow said, nodding as if Darrel had given this as an explanation for the delay. It was as if the incident had been forgotten completely.

"Darrel made very good grades in high school," Mrs. Curtis said. "And he was captain of the football team."

"Voted Boy of the Year at his high school, weren't you, Dar?" Darrel's father said.

"That was two years ago," Darrel muttered. His ears were spectacularly red. "It doesn't mean anything anymore."

"Why, of course it does!" his mother said. "The respect of all your peers – why, that means everything in the world."

"It's just until I have enough saved up," Darrel said to Pellicrow. "I tar roofs."

"Damn waste of time for a kid like you. Got a girl?" Pellicrow asked suddenly.

"No," Darrel said.

Darrel's father laughed. "Come on, Dar, what about the cheerleader?"

"I haven't seen her in months," Darrel said, and it was the truth. Judy Bulisco had gone away to school in September and he hadn't heard from her since.

"If Junior were any younger I'd make him cover his ears, but I think he can appreciate that in my high school the Boy of the Year could make any girl he wanted," Pellicrow said without any trace of embarrassment.

Darrel's mother half-gasped. "_Frank!_"

Her husband laughed. "And I'll bet you stole every one of those girls away from the poor sonofagun, didn't you!"

Darrel had a flash of recollection of his dream from the night before. Briefly his mind's eye gave Judy's long tanned legs the once-over.

Mrs. Curtis smiled at no one in particular. She said, "I met Darrel in high school, you know. He was a couple of years ahead of me and I thought to myself surely there was no way he'd notice me. After he graduated I thought I'd never see him again."

"Anyone would notice if a beautiful girl stared him down in the hallway every day," Mr. Curtis chuckled.

"My folks didn't want us getting married so young," the wife continued, "but what with the draft and everything … well, things were a lot less certain back then. It was the day after I graduated. And you left not more than a week later."

"You could have been a widow at eighteen," Pellicrow said.

"Well, we've never settled for the easy way," Mrs. Curtis replied, her voice tinged with only a little ruefulness. "Like you said, I suppose I always have been a romantic, despite myself. The soldier marrying his sweetheart … I always thought of you, Darrel, prayed you were all right. But at the same time, I was so envious of you – all the places you got to see – Morocco, like something out of _Casablanca_."

For the first time, Darrel saw his mother as a young girl. In the dim light of the restaurant, she looked like an apparition from two decades ago – her skin lit by the candles cast a golden glow on her like a yellowed photograph. She had married her sweetheart, feared for his life, and was now trapped in the poor part of a city that was far away from the world her soldier had described in the blacked-out letters. She had always covered it well around her sons; the mother Darrel knew was composed and determined. But this Viv, in _this _World War II, was only a vestige of a former self – or perhaps, it was an unearthing.

The main course arrived. Chewing, Darrel thought, I can't believe they charged two whole dollars for a cheeseburger thinking _it's not the food Dad likes about this place, it's the getting to be a hero again. Play it again, Sam._

After they had finished eating, the waiter asked whether they would care to see the dessert menu. After Mrs. Curtis shook her head, Pellicrow waved him off.

Darrel wanted nothing more than to leave, but there was still Scotch in the bottle. Pellicrow lit a cigarette.

"You." Pellicrow pointed to Darrel. "It's a damned shame you're being wasted in a dead-end job."

"It's only till I go to college," Darrel said.

"It's a damned shame. A bright kid who'll stand up for what he thinks is right," Pellicrow said. "I want you to know, boy, there's a job in Omaha for you if you want it."

Darrel said stupidly: "Me? At your company?"

Darrel's parents looked equally stunned.

"That's extremely generous of you – and very, very kind –, but Darrel has a scholarship to OU," said Mrs. Curtis.

"And here's a good opportunity to help get him there faster," Pellicrow rumbled. "You don't have a girl to keep you here, and you never know what life'll hand you next. Sleep on it, boy."

The check arrived; Pellicrow and Darrel's father promptly had a tug-of-war over it. Pellicrow won, but only after he promised to stay with the Curtises over Easter weekend.

"I think we had better get out of your hair, Frank," Mrs. Curtis said.

"Shoot, the old man's grateful to have any hair left at all," her husband quipped. His face was ruddy, relaxed.

"I won't deny it," Pellicrow said, "but damned if I get one of them, uh, what-do-you-call-its – hair grafts. American technology's slipped over the years."

With those parting words and a few handshakes and hugs, the Curtises left the hotel.

"I don't think you ought to be driving," Mrs. Curtis said to her husband as they walked back to the parking lot.

Darrel the father tossed his keys to Darrel the son. After his wife climbed into the back of the car, Mr. Curtis slumped down into the passenger seat. With some difficulty, Darrel turned on the engine and headed for the freeway. Again the heater took a while to warm up, but only two bodies shivered. The third was warm with drink.

Even with the afternoon sun's slow thawing of the land, the roads were still slick from the storm. Darrel checked his rearview mirror every few seconds for signs of trouble.

"Dar, you don't know how good you've got it," Darrel's father was saying. The morning's coffee was still in the corners of his mouth. "You've got nowhere to go but up. What I wouldn't give for that to be me again … to have every door open. You're becoming a man …"

And though Darrel had heard his father say those words many times before, this was the first time he understood what was implied.

Darrel's mother reached forward and put a steadying hand on her husband's shoulder. The golden girl of the Forties had once again retreated, or been repressed. By the time his brothers would get home from school, it would be good enough again. Darrel wondered if it had always been like this.

Pellicrow's words replayed in Darrel's head. The offer seemed unbelievable, too good to be true. As Darrel watched a big rig accelerate toward the merge of the on-ramp and the slow lane, he thought, Why doesn't he go faster? thinking _maybe it was the optimist in him coming out like my mother did, in the un-world of the restaurant, only to disappear back in the real world _I can't go fast enough to pass him in time. _or perhaps it's to get back at me for offending him _All right fine, cut me off. I'm in his blind spot, I oughtn't get steamed up. _but I have no girl here, and I want to make something of myself and _Blast it, how hard is it to use your turn signal! _and … I want to take him at his word._

The truck sped on by.

With relief, Darrel saw the sign for his exit and signaled his way into the right lane. He steered the car down the off-ramp, thinking _at last I have arrived_ _and everything is attainable,_ and then he brought it to a halt at the T intersection. He flicked on his left turn signal and drove.

Darrel did not see the van coming. It had been going at high speed when suddenly it skidded off the road, then fishtailed into the right side of the sedan. For a minute, as Darrel was thrown against the left side of the car, all he could perceive was the crash of shattering glass and the garish red of blood, not his own, everywhere, spreading.

In the hours and days and weeks and months after the crash, even when the Omaha man in gray flannel stands next to him at the funeral and clamps a hand on his shoulder and mutters "Any time. A job with your name on it," even when Judy Bulisco sends him a handwritten card with her condolences, even when his younger brother drops out of school, even when his youngest brother glares at him with unexpressed accusations of murder, Darrel never mentions Frank Pellicrow's offer.

He will never mention how badly his father wanted to be a man again, if only through his namesake.

He will never mention his mother's golden-tinted melancholy.

He will bear the weight of all three dead dreams. And the guilt he feels will drown him in an effluvium of thinking _you can't see it coming just react when it hits you._


End file.
